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12/06/2015

ELIZABETH FREMANTLE, WATCH THE LADY: TUDOR ENGLAND, POETRY AND LOVE

Tudor England is a great setting for an historical novel. I've asked Elizabeth Fremantle, bestselling author of three intriguing novels set in that era, a few questions to discover more of its allure.

WATCH THE LADY is set
in the Elizabethan Age. What is the allure of Tudor England on modern readers?

It’s hard to say why the Tudor period has captivated modern
readers so much more than other periods. I am personally fascinated by the
state of political and cultural flux that came with the Reformation and the
exploration of the New World, which coincided with an unprecedented
half-century of female rule. England was late to the renaissance but in the
late sixteenth century with writers such as Spenser, Sidney and Shakespeare
there was a great literary flourishing that continues to have relevance today.

What is the most
intriguing aspect of that age to you,
instead, both as a historical
researcher/writer and a reader?

My particular interest lies with women writers and this was
the time when they began to take up their pens. My first book QUEEN’S GAMBIT is
about Katherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII, who few know was one of the
first women to publish an original work in the English language. The period is
filled with intriguing and powerful women whose stories continue to captivate
modern readers, some of which, like Penelope Devereux’s in WATCH THE LADY, have
been forgotten by history and merit re-expooration.

Writing historical
fiction must be challenging. How much do you work on research and how important
is historical accuracy to you?

In my novels I like to remain faithful to the historical
record but I am not under the illusion that it is possible to achieve absolute
accuracy when dealing with the distant past.
Often history contradicts itself, in differing points of view, and the
truth remains elusive but there is usually a framework of known fact that I
will work to.

What the fiction writer does, as opposed to the historian,
is create a plausable inner world for their characters, which can only be an
invention. A character’s intimate thoughts and feelings can be teased out from
reading letters and looking at the way they might have responded to a set of
circumstances but that is where the fiction lies.

I find it important to immerse myself in knowledge about the
world in which my characters lived, the social history, the way ordinary people
passed their time, the details about everyday life, in order to create a
believable back-drop to my stories. I glean information from all sorts of
sources: Elizabethan etiquette manuals, letters, artefacts, architecture and
portraits, as well as reading as many biographical works about all the people
who populate my stories. But for me creating the environment is just as
important as the facts of an individual’s life.

The heroine of your
novel is Penelope Devereux, the woman who inspired Sir Philip Sidney love
poetry. Is she a historical or a fictional character? Can you tell us more
about her?

Penelope Devereux is very much a historical figure. She was
the older sister of the Earl of Essex and belonged to one of the most prominent
families in England. I was keen to tell her story because history has been
unkind to her for the fact that she lived her life according to her own desires
rather than being oppressed by the expected codes of female behaviour in the
period. James I dubbed her, ‘a fair woman with a black heart,’ and it was felt
that her open adultery sullied the reputation of Sir Philip Sidney, who was
held up as the appogee of Protestant chivalry. She was his muse, that is
undeniable, but contemporary biographers saw his links to her as problematic
and sought to distance him from such a controversial woman.

Of course this is exactly what interests me about her.

Your Penelope reminds
me of Shakespeare’s heroines, never actually damsels in distress (Portia,
Viola, Celia) . What inspired you in depicting her personality?

As I mention above, it is Penelope’s refusal to behave obediently
that I find fascinating. You’re right that women like her begin to appear in
the work of Shakespeare and I suppose he was reflecting a social change. I read
a good deal of the literature of the period for my research but it was the
facts of Penelope’s life that truly inspired me.

Robert Cecil and
Queen Elizabeth are two historical characters in your novel. Is it challenging
to give this iconic figure a voice ? And
is it easier to write completely fictional characters or the historical ones?
Why?

The more famous a figure the more difficult I find they are
to write, as one has to deal with so many preconceived notions. Henry VIII in
QUEEN’S GAMBIT and Elizabeth I in SISTERS OF TREASON and WATCH THE LADY
provided the greatest challenges for this reason. It is hard to escape the idea
of Henry as a great fat, one-dimensional tyrant. Depictions of Elizabeth are
more varied. Elizabeth appears in all three of my Tudor novels and in a sense
the trilogy is about her rise to power and the way she held onto it once she
had it. That is the backdrop. She’s a fascinating and complex character but one
who has been disected on countless occasions making it hard to be original. I wanted
to show her contradictory nature: ruthless, yet vulnerable and hope I have
succeeded.

Robert Cecil on the other hand was a dream to write – he
came to me fully formed as a character, perhaps because of his role as
antagonist to the Devereuxs. He’s not a straightforward villain though and I
wanted to expose the cracks in his armour.

I rarely write purely fictional characters; even the
insignificant people in my books were often the actual individuals who lived in
close proximity to my characters. Jeanne, Penelope’s companion in WATCH THE LADY, for example was a real figure. In QUEEN’S GAMBIT Katherine Parr’s maid
Dot was also a real figure though I expanded greatly on the very few facts
known about her to make her a main character in the novel and in so doing
turned her into a largely fictional figure. Giving a character a fictional
narrative like this can help with the pacing of a narrative; when there is a
lull in real events there is potential for action elsewhere.

One of Philip
Sidney’s most famous lines is “The only
disadvantage of an honest heart is credulity”. What about his love for
Penelope in your story?

I love this quote from Sidney; it seems to encapsulate his
character. For my depiction of him and his love for Penelope I explored the
sonnets – it’s all there, his affection, his jealous rages, his heartbreak.
Astrophil and Stella is a staggeringly personal depiction of Sidney’s intimate
feelings, so not much invention was needed on my part.

What is the
trickiest, hardest aspect of writing historical fiction?

Sometimes it is a great challenge to make a true story work
as fiction in terms of pacing and narrative arc. As I mentioned above, I seek
to adhere to the historical record and sometimes this makes it hard to shape
the story, but nothing is ever impossible.

When you are not
writing, what do you like doing?

I’m a big reader and a great film buff, love visiting
historic sites and when not at my desk I can usually be found walking my dogs.

I’m fond of reading
historical fiction but I also love watching period drama series on TV? What do
you think of costume drama series? Do you watch them? Would you like to see any
of your books adapted?

I do love a costume drama and am very pleased to be able to
say that QUEEN’S GAMBIT is being adapted for the screen, though it is likely to
take some time to come to fruition.

What are you up to at
present or in the next future?

I have just delivered a draft of my next book, which is
about the tragic Arbella Stuart, a woman who was raised to be Elizabeth’s heir
only to have her expectations thwarted when her cousin James I took the English
throne. She was a complicated woman, who struggled to find a way to take
control of her own destiny. Her story is intertwined with that of Elizabethan
poet Aemilia Lanyer. This, as yet un-named novel, will be published in the UK
next year and is the first in a quartet of Stuart books.

Thanks for being my
guest at FLY HIGH!, Maria Elizabeth. Much appreciated. I can’t wait to read
your novel!

It was a great pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Elizabeth Fremantle

Praise for Watch the Lady

From “a brilliant new player in the court of royal fiction” (People) and
the author of Queen’s Gambit and Sisters of Treason comes the mesmerizing story
of Lady Penelope Devereux—the little-known, daring beauty in the Tudor court,
who inspired Sir Philip Sidney’s famous sonnets even while she plotted against
Queen Elizabeth.

Book Blurb

Penelope arrives at Queen
Elizabeth’s court where she and her brother, the Earl of Essex, are drawn into
the aging Queen’s favor. Penelope, though promised elsewhere, falls in love
with Philip Sidney who pours his heartbreak into the now classic sonnet series,
Astrophil and Stella. But Penelope is soon married off to a man who loathes
her. Never a damsel in distress, she chooses her moment and strikes a deal with
her husband: after she gives birth to two sons, she will be free to live as she
chooses, with whom she chooses.

Meanwhile the devious politician,
Robert Cecil, ever loyal to Elizabeth, has his eye on Penelope and her brother.
Although it seems that Essex can do no wrong in the eyes of the Queen, as his
influence grows, so his enemies gather. Penelope must draw on all her political
savvy to save her brother from his own ballooning ambition and Cecil’s trap,
while daring to plan for an event it is treason even to think about.

Smart, meticulously researched,
thrilling and romantic, this book is a brilliant standout in its genre. If you
love authors like Philippa Gregory, Hilary Mantel and Alison Weir, you must
reads Maria Elizabeth Fremantle. In fact, The Bookseller called her first
novel: “what Hilary Mantel fans should read while waiting for the final part of
her trilogy.”

8 comments:

Looks like a wonderful story! I am intrigued by this era, so many events that have lasting effects took place. Sydney is from an interesting family and has always been a romantic figure for me. Thanks for taking the time and effort to portray your take on him. I know the book is about the woman, but I will enjoy to man too!

I would say that one of the reasons why Tudor era is so appealling is because Henry VIII changed everything. With his divorces, his separation from the Church and so on, this era was in a way a "fresh" change. I mean, things were not always seen from the smae perspective. Kings and queens now had a different and more power. OBviously having the great authors as Shakespeare is key for this era but I believe that Henry VIII is another key character for this period.

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I've been an English teacher for a long time now and a blogger for more than 5 years. I love classic literature, reading, theatre, period drama, art and that is what I usually write about on FLY HIGH and My Jane Austen Book Club. I'd love to hear from you! Leave your comments to my posts or send e-mail messages to learnonline.mgs@gmail.com.

"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."— Italo Calvino

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